Garden rescue

With searing, middle-aged inevitability, I've found succour in soil

When Glen comes to the feeder, it’s the beat of wings you hear first. Then, silence. There is to be no sound while eating. Quietly, he demolishes the seeds and fat balls, before one of us rouses ourselves from the sofa and bangs on the window, sending him back to his perch in the ash tree at the back of the garden.

Glen is what can only be described as a corpulent wood pigeon. In the four weeks since the bird feeder went up, he’s managed to devour two giant feeders’ worth of seed, spreading anything he hasn’t eaten over the flowerbed below. He comes back and hoovers that lot up once the feeder is empty.

The only other visitor is an inquisitive magpie, let’s call them Marge, who likes to drop by around 6pm each day to peer in through the kitchen door and, when realising nothing is on offer indoors, heads to what Glen has left to pick up the scraps.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed by the visible birdlife that has come to our new garden in the month and a half since we moved in. A pair of blue tits spent a fortnight scoping out our new bird box in the ash, making daily sorties with nest material, before promptly abandoning us for a spot deep in the neighbours’ leylandii. A friendly male blackbird digs for worms each evening inside my son’s new goal posts. And, yes, there’s been a nuthatch in the branches of the elder. But otherwise, nothing.

Scenes from a very simple garden, Sheffield, May 2025

I had held great hopes that the birds would flock down now that I’ve turned the garden from a blank canvas of tired lawn into a mish mash of flower beds, messy holes where shrubs are beginning to thrive and a much-loved, hardly sprouting fruit and veg corner. If they didn’t do it, then surely the new pond, dug on our first weekend here when my adrenaline levels were akin to pre-marathon levels, would bring them down for a drink.

It seems, though, that they prefer the comfort of Chancet Wood, at the top of the hill. Who can blame them? Dense woodland, undergrowth full of insects and no middle-aged men peering up at them while sipping coffee and busting out their Merlin app to confirm their species.

This, then, is a lesson in patience. As is the garden in general. The initial flurry of activity, of putting up the greenhouse, digging beds, potting plants, carefully putting seeds into trays and watering in lieu of the fact that it has hardly rained since we moved north, is over. Now it’s time to wait. Each morning I prowl the garden for signs of life. Why aren’t the peas shooting up yet? Did I leave the broccoli to fry in the greenhouse and can it be rescued? Why is the pond looking so devoid of pondlife?

The simple fact is, I’ve been forgetting that things take time. Like, lots. Birds will come when they want to. Plants and flowers will take their own path towards enlightenment, as long as they get some love via the form of recycled water from the kids’ paddling pool and the relentless sunlight the north of England has been bathed in for almost two months.

This is a lesson that I have failed to learn in life more times than any other. I have always been a rusher. I want things done and I want them done yesterday. It’s how I work, it’s even how I relax. What’s next and when are we going to make it happen? The garden has shown me this is not sustainable, as it inevitably would, but my body has decided it wants in on the action too.

The garden has had a part to play in this. The pollen count has been higher than the Grateful Dead on stage at Fillmore East. My usual symptoms of turning bug-eyed and having a streaming nose have switched to a brutal, hacking cough. But it’s not just the hayfever, although that’s part of it.

I spent the first three months of 2025, and the last three of 2024, in a state of absurd high alert. A house move that turned into a late 19th century Russian saga. The loss of virtually all of my work to AI. The decision to start researching and writing a new book. Exercising at levels that would make a 27-year-old feel knackered. And helping to raise two small kids who were about to move 250 miles away from the only city they’d ever called home.

At the time, not one part of this seemed out of the ordinary. Somehow (hello high SSRI dose and A+ therapist), it all felt pretty manageable, if at times hectic.

Within a week of moving, though, my body gave me a resounding fuck you. The shivers, a cold, sore throat and an enduring level of fatigue. I’d try to exercise and need a lie down. Nothing would shift it. I rested, took a day to sleep, and then was back at my desk before I should have been. I got checked out and was told it was just a virus, to take it easy. And this is where the patience thing comes in.

Because, surprise, surprise, I didn’t listen. I was back out in the garden, digging more plots, laying plans. I was in the sauna getting a whisk from a friend. I was up on the tops with the kids on hot days. I was juggling three gigs, some late into the evening. And last week, it all came crashing down again. Back to bed, no exercise, no work, no weeding, no planting.

I’ve always felt I need to be outdoors, whether here in my new garden, on the beach back in Brighton, or exploring the Peaks now. I’ve also always felt that I need to be on, doing something. Writing, researching, pitching. The jobs may come and go, but the thought processes rarely stop. I’ve settled into my role as a doer, and I quite like it.

Except. It doesn’t always need to be this way. This is the first time in 43 years that my body has decided it’s had enough in such a consistent manner. Previous bouts of illness and exhaustion could be shaken off. This one clearly requires a new approach.

Which is where the garden comes back in. I have taken great pleasure in pottering. Marvelling at seedlings that I planted poking out tentatively from the compost. How a raspberry plant can go from modest to untamed in woeful soil in the space of a few weeks. Pulling up some weeds and leaving others. Enjoying the madness that is the lawn during No Mow May.

I’ve been inspired by three writers, in particular. Martha Swales and her super Give It A Grow, which has helped me go from uncertain to blindly confident vegetable gardener. Kate Bradbury’s Substack, One Garden Against The World, which has imbued me with purpose when it comes to giving my garden over to nature as much as it being a space for growing food and nurturing a haphazard collection of plants and flowers. And Horticulturish, who bills herself as ‘Neither a real writer nor a real gardener,’but is in fact incredible at both. Her 1,000 tulips in the back garden of her Battersea flat have already got me planning ahead for 2026. Her fearless approach to her own “Good Parcel of English Soil" (to quote Richard Mabey) is what makes her writing so infectious. It’s an approach to life that I admire greatly.

So, it’s this way, it seems, that I’m going to take things easier. Smell the roses, so to speak (we only have one, but I’ll try my best). It’s exciting. But in a slow, ponderous and meandering kind of way. You’ll find me out the back if you need me.